Fighting Parkinson’s, and cultivating your garden

On Wednesday, I was explaining to a person that I viewed a big part of my spiritual healing in the same way I viewed cultivating Sally and my gardens. I saw my soul as the seed of God inside me that needed nurturing. As I nurtured the seed, my soul, it grew and pushed away the toxicity of my mind and body, ultimately leading to my full recovery. It lead to a great discussion, and she asked me to post this for all of you.

Fighting Parkinson’s is a lot like cultivating our garden. To begin, we plant the seeds in the soil. The seeds are pushed down a few inches into the soil and then covered up by the soil. This is how I saw my soul…deep inside me, and covered up by the toxicity of my body and my mind.

Every day, we water the soil where we planted the seeds with the faith that all of the things happening under the soil are happening the way they are supposed to happen. We do this watering day after day after day with little or no sign of progress on the surface. Sounds a lot like Parkinson’s recovery, doesn’t it? If you are doing the Parkinson’s Recipe for Recovery®, then you know exactly what I mean.

I am going to digress for a moment. Let’s talk about weeds. Weeds are like Parkinson’s disease. They grow under the surface and build strong root systems. We do not need to water them or care for them or fertilize them…in fact, it seems the more we ignore our garden, the happier the weeds are to invade the garden.

And, every now and again we see a weed and think, “I really don’t feel like dealing with that weed today.” Then another weed pops up, and another and another and another. And suddenly we think, “Oh, no! Now I have to deal with these weeds taking over my garden.”

Initially, we just want to cut them at surface level because then our garden looks pretty again. However, by cutting the weeds at the surface and thinking, “Oh, I have a pretty garden, and I am happy those weeds are gone,” we are fooling ourselves. We have not solved the weed problem…we actually have enhanced it. While the weeds are “out of sight, out of mind” they are growing more roots under the soil, and when they break the surface, they are bigger and stronger than before.

And what are these weeds doing below the surface? They are overtaking the seeds and root systems of our garden. If we let this go on long enough, our garden is overcome by weeds, and our flowers and vegetable plants will not grow because they have been strangled by the weeds. We heal our garden by digging up and pulling out the weeds at their roots from deep under the soil, and we nurture our flower and vegetable seeds into plants, into blossoms, into flowers, into vegetables.

You heal yourself from Parkinson’s in the same manner, with the same determination, the same patience, the same faith, and the same nurturing. Parkinson’s recovery starts from deep within…it is where the disease, like the weeds, festered and grew undetected (and later ignored for a while), and it is deep within you where it has spread and negatively impacted your organs.

So, where do you go from here? Start pulling the weeds and nurturing the seeds, or, in Parkinson’s terms, get on your path to recovery. The physical part of the Recipe heals and cleanses your organs. The mental part of the Recipe calms your mind and heals negative emotions.

These two parts of the Recipe prepare the soil and help eradicate some of the weeds to make room for the plants to grow. However, it is the spiritual healing that nurtures the seeds, devours the weeds, pushes the rest of the soil out of the way, and grows the plants, the flowers, and the vegetables to fruition…the releasing of your dopamine and the expression of the full radiance of your soul…the expression of the fully recovered authentic you!

When my children were young, they were disappointed the day after we planted the seeds because they would run outside with the excited expectation of seeing vegetable plants…all they saw was moist soil from the day before. Obviously, as adults, we all know that their expectations were unreasonable because a seed will not grow into a plant and produce vegetables overnight. It is the same for Parkinson’s recovery.

However, what my children did learn is that if we went outside every day with no expectation of seeing plants that day, but instead, with the understanding and faith that if we watered the spots and continued to pull the weeds that occasionally poked their heads out of the soil, that eventually we would see vegetable plants break through the soil.

And then, we needed to continue to have love and patience and faith as we nurtured the plants and secured them to stakes and watched them blossom, and ultimately see them provide us with vegetables.

This took weeks and months, not days. This is Parkinson’s recovery. You are the garden. Go and look in the mirror at the garden you are today, and then envision in your heart the garden you want to be.

Okay, now take the Recipe and start cultivating your garden…you need to give yourself the same love, patience, hope, and faith that you would give the seeds in the garden outside, and you need to nurture yourself on the path to recovery.

My wife’s the gardener, so I often have trouble telling the weeds from the flowers. Fortunately for my recovery, it’s pretty easy to tell negative and unhealthy thoughts and emotions from the positive and wholesome variety.

I have been getting a lot of messages from the universe (via movies, books, reading about the new moon online, etc.) to focus on my spiritual development. Howard, this post gives me something tangible I can think about and apply to such an intangible activity! Thank you! Thank you!

Beautiful blog and wonderful analogy thank you Howard!. I have recently read “The Power of Now” by Eckart Tolle and I’m currently reading “The True You” by Erica Rock both are excellent fertilizers for my growing garden!
Wishing you all a bountiful harvest
Love
Margaret

Faith has been a real challenge for me recently. And I’ve been growing a garden for the first time in my life and when I cover up weeds with plastic or cardboard to stop the sun from shining on them they don’t grow. Now to Stop feeding my self destructive thoughts and patterns. No more sun for them.

This blog entry is exactly why I knew Western medicine is not the answer to PD recovery. The neurologist does not give us hope or a framework to address why this happened to us. We are only taught how to manage our symptoms. Additionally we are told there is no way to reverse the progressive path of the disease. Having a path to address our bodies, mind and spirit is our only hope. With the gentle guidance Howard provides along with the recovery community I know I am healing. But I also need to nurture my relationship with my Source, who helps me to see what my specific plan is because I am unique. In my disease I disconnected from my Higher Power, now I honor and nurture that garden so the communication can remain an open line. Thank you all.